


Potent Dreams and Paper Wings

by Stariceling



Category: Welcome to Hell - All Media Types
Genre: Blood, Dreams and Nightmares, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, Psychological Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-08
Updated: 2013-08-08
Packaged: 2017-12-22 19:21:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/917071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stariceling/pseuds/Stariceling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some more experienced demons try to teach Sock about a new way to torment Jonathan. Everything quickly goes wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Potent Dreams and Paper Wings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [artistfingers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/artistfingers/gifts).



> All because of a conversation with artistfingers about Hell having a break room and if the other demons would harass Sock or show him the ropes of the whole demon business.
> 
> Funny story. I know you aren’t supposed to be able to feel pain in dreams, but after a recent rash of nightmares I would like to say: Yes. You can. (Or at least I can.) Your brain can indeed inform you that you are in pain in a dream. Even if you then wake up and think to yourself, “In retrospect that was actually bullshit.”

“You don’t have to make him bleed to hurt him. It’s not about physical pain. It’s about the trauma.”

“But I like blood,” Sock whined into his coffee.

This argument was greeted with an uproar of laughter. One of the other demons, a girl with a bloody hole where her left eye should have been and lines of tooth-like scales down her arms, chimed in, “He’s so cute! Can we keep him?”

As the newest recruit, Sock had been pulled aside by a few of his fellow demons. He had expected some kind of hazing, but instead they wanted to share tips about the kinds of psychological warfare he could wage as a demon, and ways to get around the rules and ghostly limitations that kept him from physically harming his target.

Hell’s break room was full of demons with varying degrees of human (and probably-not-human) forms. One was filing his friend’s horns sharp. Another was sharpening her own teeth, periodically testing them with her fingers and drawing blood, which she carelessly spat across the floor. No one commented or seemed to care about the splatters of blood.

There was a large dry-erase board on one wall, proclaiming in different tints of green that it was the third circle’s turn to bring snacks to the next meeting and the seventh circle’s turn to clean the break room. Sock wasn’t sure if the blood splattered over the walls was a mess or some kind of decoration.

Sock still didn’t understand much about how other demons operated, or even how to tell between the many different types, from imp to incubus. Most of them were glad to teach him, but the lessons he’d gotten so far mostly involved why they shouldn’t be messed with.

Now, however, the other Earth-bound demons were competitively sharing the worst nightmares they had inflicted on their assignments. When they entered a person’s dreams the pain they caused wouldn’t leave any physical marks on a target’s body, but it would have the same effect on the mind. It was a way to torture victims they weren’t allowed to touch.

Sock could feel his own eyes growing wider and wider at each suggestion of what he could do to Jonathan. There were so many things he never would have thought of. Things a living person should never have been able to survive were somehow allowed in nightmares. And the whole time, in the back of his mind, he couldn’t help imagining Jonathan’s familiar face cold with disdain and his voice dripping with sarcasm.

It was already night when he slipped out of Hell and crossed back to Earth. He floated through Jonathan’s window and hovered over his bed. Jonathan’s snores were loud in the dark room. Once he was asleep almost nothing could disturb him. Sock knew that from experience.

Entering dreams was easy, they had told him. Just occupy the same space as his target, and his mind would shift to occupy the same mental space as well.

Sock crept his way into Jonathan’s bed, slipping through the covers. He lay down so close that if he were solid he would have been pressed flush along Jonathan’s body, spooning him. He took a deep breath, inhaling the acrid scent of Jonathan’s shampoo, and then rolled over all at once, directly into Jonathan.

There was no time to close his eyes or attempt to sleep. He blinked and suddenly the room went from close and dark to stark, bright, and limitless.

Sock found himself surrounded by drifts of plain white paper spilling out in all directions. Jonathan was close by, sitting cross-legged among the mountains of paper and folding piece after piece. A pile of origami cranes were scattered around him on the floor.

When Jonathan didn’t look up, Sock took a piece of paper from the pile and folded it himself. It took a few tries, but he managed to get something shaped more-or-less like a knife. The other demons had explained he couldn’t bring anything with him into a human’s dreams. He had to use what he found there, but his intent was supposed to be more important than the item itself.

Sock ran his finger along the edge of the knife and felt the sting as his blood decorated the paper blade. That was good enough to work with. Sock grinned to himself as he crept up behind Jonathan. It felt like such a long time since he’d lost his favorite knife, and he hadn’t gotten to stab anything since.

Yet when he reached out it wasn’t with the knife. Instead, he put his empty hand on Jonathan’s shoulder.

The moment he touched Jonathan the nature of the dream snapped into something else. The stark piles of sharp-edged paper became fuzzy around the edges. The pile of cranes around Jonathan whipped to life, surrounding them in a whirlwind of paper wings that wrapped close enough to flick against Sock’s exposed skin, peppering him with paper cuts.

Sock yelped in surprise and dropped his knife, throwing one arm up to protect his eyes. There were thousands of paper wings, enough to blind him in a storm of white. Enough that they could flay him completely with countless tiny cuts.

Except before that could happen Jonathan reached through the storm to grab him. Jonathan pulled him out, pulled him close, and held on to him.

Before Sock could process what was happening he was zipped up inside of Jonathan’s hoodie, face pressed into Jonathan’s shoulder, and Jonathan was yelling in his ear.

“Were you seriously going to stab me!?”

“Yes!”

The knife he had made twisted itself into a dragonfly, its body streaked red with blood, and nipped at Sock’s cheeks until Jonathan flicked it away.

Sock knew he was crying because he could feel the tears sting and burn in the cuts on his face. All he could think about was fire and acid and the cold twist of claws in his gut, the stories of torture that no living body should have been able to endure, and how no one had warned him that Jonathan’s dreaming mind would fight back.

“Why did you pull me out?”

“I don’t know,” Jonathan muttered. He wiped his sleeve roughly through the blood and tears on Sock’s face. “Because you’re pitiful.”

Sock wrapped his arms around Jonathan’s neck and pressed his face into Jonathan’s chest, printing his white shirt with blood. “Thank you.”

“Don’t say ‘thank you.’ That wasn’t a compliment.” Jonathan was silent for a moment before grumbling, “You can get out now.”

Sock peeked up to find Jonathan pointedly not looking at him, but staring at the flocks of paper cranes spiraling together in the distance. His cheeks were flushed faintly pink.

“I don’t want to.”

“Why not? You’re all bloody, and. . . just get out of my head already!”

“It’s not about the blood,” Sock answered. _It’s about the trauma_ , he thought. But it wasn’t really trauma. Not the way his heart was racing helplessly, not this unfamiliar warmth of touching Jonathan, of being wrapped up in someone’s arms. Sock didn’t know what that feeling was. All he knew was that he wanted to stay in this dream with Jonathan.


End file.
